


Cloudwatching Is a Fancy Excuse To Stare At The Sun

by mouseInk



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine, Naruto
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/M, First Crush, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Overanalyzing Everything, Pining, Teen Angst, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24226723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseInk/pseuds/mouseInk
Summary: The fact that Shikako had a crush on Sasuke would be more manageable, if she had any idea what to do with it. Even though this was her second go at life, she was completely out of her depth here, which was an unsettling feeling for somebody who spent the last 14 years of her life with an idea of what was going on.
Relationships: Nara Shikako/Uchiha Sasuke
Comments: 17
Kudos: 211
Collections: Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection





	1. Monologuing About Romance Is About As Interesting As You'd Expect

**Author's Note:**

> I ramble a lot in this chapter. It mostly started as a "how could Shikako, as a SI of SQ who is aro/ace, get a crush?"
> 
> Skip to the next chapter if you'd like. It actually has things like, dialogue, and things that happen, instead of just an introspection.

Hormones were a  _ bitch _ .

Or maybe it was puberty. Maybe it was just the way that this world worked.

But either way, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sasuke.

In my life Before, I never had a long term romantic relationship. There weren't a lot of things that I remembered. It was too dangerous to have these memories in my head, in a world where my best friend could read minds. Harder still, to try to keep memories when there’s nothing in this world that could remind me of it. I don’t know what my parent’s faces looked like back then, or mine, to be honest.

I did remember one important thing about me. Relationships were  _ not _ for me. This didn’t come from a place of tragedy or mistakes- although I will admit that I went on one awful date (just because I had to see if I was making it out to be worse than it actually was), I just wasn’t too attached to the idea of romance, especially after seeing how society loved to shove it anywhere and anywhere it could fit.

I still believe that I was right, Before. That there  _ wasn’t _ going to be one person who was magically right for me, because that was a load of bullshit that people liked to tell themselves because they couldn’t believe in a world where somebody just didn’t want romantic love.

Yet, there was a single snarky Uchiha boy consuming my waking mind, who flitted by every single day whether I saw him or not- the little things in life reminding me of him wherever I went. 

There were probably reasons why things were different for me, mentally now. I’d noted, growing up, that my brain was  _ different _ , that despite containing the memories of my old life, it was distinctly not the same. 

The fact that this was a completely different world, culturally, compared to Before probably also played a big factor.

The shinobi world didn’t ram love down my throat like the world did Before, so I didn’t have to gag every time I thought about it, because I simply didn’t have to think about it. Public displays of affection were near taboo. Practically every relationship I did see- namely my parents, as well as Asuma and Kurenai-sensei, was pure, sweet, and had what I could only guess was unfiltered love. My own existence even cultivated at least two others that shouldn’t have existed- TenTen and Shika, and Zabuza and Mei-sama.

It shouldn’t have been such a surprise, either, since Konoha basically preached closeness to your fellow shinobi. Even looking past the closeness that was unavoidable between teammates, Konoha was a tightly knit village. Very few people were truly alone, if you managed to look past the god awful handling of orphans, who weren’t really seen as a threat to the village. It had its own reasons beyond tricking me into developing a crush, like protection from infiltrators, and maintaining the mental health of shinobi who had to kill on a regular basis.

Relationships were startlingly scarce among shinobi. Kakashi-sensei was a lifelong bachelor, as far as I remembered, as was Gai. Jiraiya could technically count here too, but I couldn’t recall if his behavior was by design or natural. Anko, Tsunade, and Shizune were all unattached too, and society said nothing about them. It didn’t chastise them for being unwed, didn’t tell them that they were betraying their only purpose as women. I didn’t even have to particularly worry about passing on my clan’s techniques- we had plenty of relatives, and Shika was heir anyways, so I was under zero pressure on this front.

Really, that should’ve been a point towards me being normal, but I guess the universe decided that I would be a fuckup in this department no matter what that entailed. My best defense was that I never gave myself time to think about it, that I’d just assumed that my previous views would stay the same.

Even granting myself a reprieve for developing a crush, I really couldn’t trust that it wasn’t just hormones influencing me. It’d be unbearably awkward to quite possibly fuck up our friendship, and then find out that I didn’t actually want to date Sasuke afterwards.

That makes it sound like these feelings were normal, or at least that I’d felt them before. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Sasuke overwhelmed my thoughts, sliding in easily like the time I slept with him to get away from Kino’s crying (fuck, I  _ slept  _ with him, fuck!).

While my past life had certainly helped me be more mature than my peers, I had absolutely zero experience dealing with romantic love. Even discounting the fact that I’d ditched most of what I’d learned before anyways to blend in with kids my age, there was absolutely nothing I could rely on to tell me how normal this was or wasn’t.

Nothing had changed between how we acted. It wasn’t like I suddenly got nervous and clammy around Sasuke- rather, the opposite. I was completely at ease when I was around him. While I could never tell him the entire truth about me, I trusted him with everything this second life gave me. He was one of only three people in Konoha who knew the truth about the disastrous Hot Springs mission. One of the few who knew about ANBU. One of the few who knew that I’d  _ died _ . 

I’d taken him into the Shadow State with me, too. It wouldn’t be too outrageous to say that it put me in this situation- the Nara clan techniques were all about creating sympathetic connections. Physically transforming him, with me? Our two halves of the rat hand seal becoming one whole? He literally became my other half then, my perfect complement.

It’d be an awful day in hell, the day I didn’t feel comfortable around Sasuke. He was a natural protector- his instincts always drove him into trying to keep people safe.

It was when I wasn’t around Sasuke that I really noticed how bad-awful- _ horrible _ this crush was. It was the  _ yearning _ , the feeling of wanting him around me forever that made me despise my own mind. I’d outgrown cloud watching with Shika since the Academy, but I knew that if I ever tried again, I would only be able to think about Sasuke.

A simple stroll through the village became an ordeal. 

I saw him in the dango stands, because Anko had a thing with dango, and she had a cursed seal like Sasuke did, (and fuck, there we go, I was thinking of him again).

I saw him in every passing boy with dark hair, every flash of dark blue that managed to dominate his closet, and apparently half of Konoha’s population too (but why couldn’t it just be him this time?).

I saw him as I stepped outside my house in the mornings, halfway hoping that I’d see him casually leaning against the walls on guard duty, even though the Hot Springs incident was months ago (he would’ve walked in and said hi to mom, there was no way he’d wait outside, so why was this the third time I’ve hoped he’d be here this week?).

Sleep was no respite. I stayed up at night, tossing and turning, wondering what a world could be like where we were together. He would wake up early and surprise me with breakfast in bed. He’d wake me up with a kiss on the cheek (oh my god I want him to kiss me on the cheek), gently shaking me. We’d spend days sitting outside, basking in the warmth of the sun because there we would be worry free; there’d be nothing to prepare for, no oncoming end of the world in sight.

That was the crux of the problem. I didn’t think there’d ever be a world where we could have that. The only way that could ever happen is if I never told him the truth, that I’d left his clan to die, that I knew Itachi truly did love him, that I’d manipulated him since the minute I met him, that there was nothing genuine about me.

Still, I could dream. I could dream of sunshine for the rest of my life- it’d be the closest I could ever get to it, anyways. Dreams didn’t hurt people, so that was the next best thing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite Shikako's adamant refusal to do anything about her crush, it's surprisingly difficult to tell yourself to Not Think about something. The next best thing is to understand it, and if nothing else, a three month stint in Intelligence and a specialization in a Rock Bingo Book mean that she's well equipped to figure it out, even if it's not in a way any other living being would do it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first chapter was basically just a long monologue/introspection/prologue? But this chapter and any other chapters following should be actual character interactions! and dialogues! that sounds fun!

The thing about being perfectly happy without romance in my first life was that I genuinely didn’t know where to start once my crush finally manifested. I’d been the love guru my friends went to for advice Before, because apparently not worrying about love somehow made you an expert in it to everybody else. While that let me know what things to worry about, that list was terrifyingly long.

The crush could have theoretically been based on the fact that this was what I assumed was the right background for dating. A boy and a girl who were close  _ should  _ date- one of the most oft-quoted pieces of advice I heard, “your husband should be your best friend.”

That was stupid. Your best friend should be your best friend, and if it happens to be your spouse, that’s fine too. That didn’t mean that friendship was in some way lesser than romance; it was just a different type of love. If my new Nara brain decided that was the way things were, it was finally something my old brain had an advantage in.

The world was different enough that I figured it wasn’t just me falling in with society’s expectations. Ino and Sakura had accepted my lack of interest without too much protest when we were still in the Academy. Not very many active field shinobi got married, generally because of the lifestyle- it was difficult to maintain a relationship when you were constantly worried that your other would die on a mission, and you’d be lucky to be in the village together for long if you both were in the field.

Still, I didn’t really have a baseline for what was genuine romantic love, and what was a teenage crush.

I couldn’t go to anyone for help or advice. It’d be too weird. My parents were out of the question. Ignoring the awkwardness of bringing anything like this up to them, it might make them act differently to Sasuke. Even though we weren’t technically his family, we were the closest thing he had, and it would be wrong to change everything about that. I wasn’t honestly sure if Ino still had a crush on Sasuke, or if she was just acting like she was over him. I  _ definitely _ couldn’t ask Sakura. Even overlooking the fact that we both had a crush on the same guy, I couldn’t trust her judgement about this, considering that she had hardly spoken to him for years and still swooned every time he passed by.

Technically speaking, Shikamaru was one of the people closest to me who actually had been dating, but that was a can of overprotective-brother-shaped worms I was not going to open.

The best course of action was to subtly gather intelligence. Luckily, a three-month stint in Intelligence gave me enough of a background that I knew that documents, rather than people, was the way to start. Books couldn’t tell on you, couldn’t reveal that you’d been looking through them- at least, if you didn’t check them out from a library.

Theoretically, I could write a sort of tamper-seal that took chakra from whoever interacted with it, and sneak it inside the cover of a book, where anyone reading it would have to touch without looking at it first. That’d have a lot of uses not just in books, but in general security- like taking the fingerprints of anyone who touched it.

I pushed aside the idea, writing it out on a scrap of paper and sealing it into the back of my wrist- a sort of  _ make sure you check this out later _ reminder. Then, I set off for the bookstore, a place where I’d blend in easily, and could easily sneak in an extra book or two into my normal purchase.

As I walked through the doors, the owner’s voice greeted me. “Welcome, Shikako.”

“Hi, Keiji!” I gave a small bow, and smiled.

Miyamizu Keiji was the owner of Konoha’s bookstore. His store didn’t sell anything that was explicitly useful to shinobi in combat, since that was a matter of information security, but anything that you read for fun could be found here. Mysteries, fantasy, romance, and history books lined the shelves of the store.

The bookstore in Konoha wasn’t quite like bookstores from Before. The Dewey Decimal System didn’t exist in this world, but that was for libraries, anyways. Books weren’t sorted by author’s names here- it was too impractical, since most authors were from clans, clans loved recycling names, and many authors from the same clan loved to write about the same thing, which meant that there could be fifteen Nara Shikakos writing about the intricacies of making paper, especially since some clans were particularly unimaginative about their naming traditions. 

Instead, books were sorted first by genre, then by publish date. There were a couple of exceptions to this. Books in a series were all categorized by the publish date of the newest book. The more popular books were on the back wall, while the newest releases were closest to the door. This meant that most new readers who just decided to pick whatever their friends were reading had to pass through most of the store’s selection, and potentially pick up something else that caught their eye, while regulars could theoretically be in and out if they wanted to be. Even if you were out of the village when a book came out, and it was no longer in the “new releases”, it was simple enough to go to the end of a section and find it there.

The system really only worked because there weren’t that many new books coming out too often anyways. There weren’t exactly factories pumping these things out, and while the printing press was invented, shipments weren’t frequent or massive. In the event that you couldn’t find the book you were looking for, Keiji had a near encyclopedic knowledge of where things were- the man lived and breathed books.

I was a regular enough customer that my presence wasn’t anything to take note of. I steadily made my way through the new releases section, making a show of looking at the cover of every single one.

“Ah, Shikako, another shipment isn’t due for another three months or so,” Keiji helpfully called out from a comfortable alcove in the window, furnished with cushions and light curtains.

I waved my hand in dismissal. “I know Keiji, I’m just looking for a gift for someone.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. While Kiba and I had taken Sai to the bookstore in the Capital on our mission to escort the now King Michiru, their selection didn’t have everything that I’d considered essential reading. I’d throw in a book for Sai to disguise my own information gathering.

He didn’t reply, nose stuck in a book- a novel about a young boy travelling across the Land of Wind, looking for a family. That seemed like a good enough book. I walked toward the adventure section to find it. Danzo would allow him to read in his free time, wouldn’t he? Drawing was probably allowed since any practice helped Sai with his ink clones, but technically speaking, the book would allow him to blend in better with general shinobi forces, and it could  _ technically _ be seen as information on Wind Country.

This was a good enough cover. I quickly made my way over to the romance section, pulling in my chakra tight. If I made myself small enough, the world wouldn’t notice me- not that I knew anybody who could passively sense as well as I could. I was completely focused on keeping track of the chakra around me. I sensed Keiji in the windowsill, people out in the road, people several buildings over, dogs, Tora, and the genin team looking for her in a wide radius around the bookstore.

It was technically my fault, then, for bumping into something. Except, I wasn’t expecting to bump into anything I shouldn’t have bumped into anything. Even if I wasn’t looking at where I was going, I’d been in this store often enough to know its layout by heart, and there wasn’t anyone’s chakra here.

The blood drained from my face as I turned to see Sasuke’s face, equally horrified.

“Sasuke! What are you doing here?” I frantically whispered. I  _ really _ didn’t want to attract Keiji’s attention, not with how much he’d bug me about this the next time I came, if he knew.

“Hiding.” he stammered quickly. He was nervous too.

Sasuke wouldn’t normally be nervous. Hiding was pretty out of character from him too- he had ice in his veins every time we set up an ambush, even against drastically stronger opponents- this was  _ bad _ . I narrowed my eyes, hand twitching as I slowly pulled out my lightsaber from Hammerspace.

“Who are we up against?” I asked, looking straight into his eyes. He wasn’t using his sharingan at the moment, probably to conserve chakra for an upcoming fight. 

The only thing that would make Sasuke this nervous was an S-class threat. We were still technically in the timeskip- nothing too dangerous should be here right now, but I’d also thrown enough canon out the window myself to know it was all too possible to be true.

I didn’t sense anyone else, but it could’ve been an ANBU. Itachi was an ANBU once, he’d probably had the same training that we had- and he’d have to be extraordinarily stupid to walk into Konoha without hiding his chakra.

Sasuke shook me out of my fervent planning, grabbing hold of my shoulders with a firm grip. He took a deep breath, calming himself. “I’m hiding from you, Kako.”

I stared back at him, puzzled. “What?”

“I was trying to find a birthday gift for you.” He stopped, refusing to elaborate.

I snorted. “And you thought that the romance section was the best place for that?” My heart squealed out from inside me:  _ yes, yes, yes, the romance section was the best place for that!  _ I ignored it.

“It should have been the absolute last place you’d go. I figured that I would hide, so I’d see what kind of book you’d want,” he shrugged. “Then, you made a beeline for me, like you  _ knew _ , so I thought you were upset at me.”

“No, you just scared me. Besides, they won’t get anything new in a couple of months, so I pretty much had everything here that I wanted, anyways.”

“You  _ don’t _ want a book for your birthday?” He looked confused, eyebrows raised.

I weakly shook my head. “I mean, was your plan just to get me any random book? I know you don’t read for fun. Even if I hadn’t already read everything I wanted to here, you’d probably be getting me a random book that has no guarantee of being good.”

Sasuke frowned. “I can read descriptions, you know. I can pick a book that sounds interesting.”

“Descriptions are bullshit. None of them can actually tell you if it’s a good book.”

“Hn. What’s the point of printing them out then?”

Point taken. “I mean, okay, they give you an idea of what the book is about, and they’re useful there, but it’s not like you can actually use them to tell you how good they are. I’d reread something I did like instead of something that was trashy, so you’d probably be wasting your money if you bought me a book.”

I paused to figure out the right analogy for the situation. “It would be like giving you standard ninja wire because I know that you like wire tricks. Like, it’s useful, and it sort of tangentially relates to your interests, but because you’re already interested in it, you’ve already got high standards, and the gift isn’t actually that good.”

Sasuke’s hand went to scratch his chin, deep in thought.“It’d be kind of patronizing. I get it- it’s like, if you sent Naruto instant ramen, or Ino some flowers you picked off of the side of the road.”

“I think Naruto would actually like that. I think that’s literally the only thing he knows how to cook, unless Jiraiya manages to get him to learn on their training trip. But yeah, you get the point.”

He tilted his head at me, reminding me all too much of our mission at Sora-ku to infiltrate the cat fortress. “So, what are  _ you _ doing at a bookstore?”

I crossed my arms. “Buying gifts. Turns out, when you  _ do _ read a lot of books, you have an idea of what kind of books your friends would like.”

He laughed quietly, face breaking out into a grin. “You think Ino’s going to sit still long enough to read? For fun?”

So, he thought I was here for her birthday. It wasn’t a terrible assumption. Her birthday was the day after mine, and considering that he was here shopping for my birthday, the timing worked out. Probably. I hadn’t thought about my own birthday in a while, and time tended to fly by when you weren’t paying enough attention to it.

“I think that Ino’s going to be bored once Shika’s current bout of motivation ends, and he can’t be convinced to train one day. And when that day comes, she will be happy to have…this!” I grabbed a random book off the shelf, shoving it in his face for him to read.

“You’re going to get her a lesbian romance novel? Are you trying to send her a signal?” Sasuke rolled his eyes at me.

I quickly turned the book over.  _ Kunoichi Secrets: Steamy Forbidden Love _ read proudly, a woman’s lips with a finger held in front of it as the album art. My face felt red hot. Even when I wasn’t on mission, my luck was still garbage. 

“That’s not- I mean- I just grabbed a book at random. Besides, how do you even know this is about lesbians? The cover art is just a finger and some lips.”

“Weren’t  _ you _ the one telling me not to grab a book at random,” he drawled, “because chances were that the book was probably trash? And now, you’re judging a book by its cover.”

He was using my own words against me. Rat. “You’re deflecting. Does that mean that you actually read this book? In your free time?” 

Sasuke slouched, dropping the air of superiority, throwing his hands in his pockets. He looked strikingly like Shika in that moment- probably from spending too much time at my house. “I saw Kakashi-sensei was reading it, and it wasn’t Icha Icha, so I thought it was something actually useful. I used my Sharingan, because I thought he’d catch me reading it over his shoulder and hide it and…” His voice died out, head falling.

“Ouch.” I patted him on the shoulder. “Any chance I can get you to look through these shelves for something Ino might like, instead, oh great Love Sage?”

Sasuke stuck his tongue out at me before grabbing a random book from the shelf, pulling it out and handing it to me, spine faced towards me. “This one,” he said, without even bothering to look at what he’d grabbed.

I looked at the prize. It turned out to be the  _ Young Kunoichi  _ magazine that Ino fawned about all the time before we graduated from the Academy. This edition was subtitled _ Dating for Shinobi: Is He Worth It? _

Ino was one of the most emotionally intelligent people I knew, and it was directly related to my information gathering on what the stupid butterflies in my stomach meant. If she read this magazine all the time, then it had to be worth something to me.

I grinned at him. “Perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got like a dozen half baked scenes that may never get actually finished, but the general format of any subsequent chapters would be Shikako Dealing With It in her own way, and people trying to give her advice. If you think any particular characters would feature well here, please do let me know so I can write a drabble and hide it away for weeks before maybe posting it if it doesn't look awful three days after I've written it.
> 
> My motivation is also as fleeting as uh... a lot of boats, so please don't surprised about how long it would take me to update, if I ever get around to it.
> 
> (honestly, any time I write on these notes is an absolute mistake. but that doesn't mean i'm going to like, stop doing that)

**Author's Note:**

> My original author's note talked about comfort zones and how this all felt weird to me to write. I am aware of SQ's general disposition towards ship fics, but at the same time, it's not that comfortable to me to erase probably one of the only/the most interesting ace/aro characters I've ever read. It's more generally about ace/aro erasure, and how there really isn't any representation at all that I can think of off of the top of my head, to the degree that the young'ins don't really have an idea of what's going on.
> 
> And like, that sucks. One of my best friends is some form of ace/aro, and I'm almost certain I would've horribly screwed up something in our friendship if I didn't understand what that meant. I'm pretty sure I have screwed things up [with someone else!] previously because I didn't know what that meant, albeit things seem normal now.
> 
> Still, I'm impulsive trash and I caved to the fact that I wanted more Shikako/Sasuke fic. because they're the fun best friends pairing, and that's just fun to write, especially because they're both horribly awkward about romance.


End file.
